George Devine

George Alexander Cassady Devine CBE (20 November 1910 – 20 January 1966) was an English theatrical manager, director, teacher, and actor based in London from the early 1930s until his death. He also worked in TV and film.

Devine was born in Hendon, London to Georgios Devine (son of an Irish father and a Greek mother) and a Canadian mother, Ruth Eleanor Cassady (from Vancouver). His father was a clerk in Martins Bank.

Ruth Devine became mentally unstable after her son's birth, and his parents' marriage, deeply unhappy throughout his early childhood, had broken down by the time he was in his early teens. Around this time he was sent to Clayesmore School, an independent boys' boarding school founded by his uncle Alexander "Lex" Devine, who took his nephew under his wing hoping that he would take over the running of the school. In 1929, Devine went to Oxford University to read for a degree in history at Wadham College.

It was at Oxford that his interest in theatre, which had begun at school, came to fruition, and in 1931 he became president of the prestigious Oxford University Dramatic Society, or OUDS. In early 1932, he invited the young actor John Gielgud to direct a production of Romeo and Juliet and, as the OUDS did not admit women, invited Peggy Ashcroft and Edith Evans to play Juliet and the Nurse. Gielgud insisted on having the costumes designed by Motley, a newly formed theatre-design team consisting of sisters Sophie and Margaret Harris as well as Elizabeth Montgomery.

The great success of the production encouraged Devine to abandon his degree before sitting his finals and move to London to begin an acting career. He also worked for Motley as their business manager.

Although Devine managed to get some work as an actor, both at the Old Vic and for John Gielgud (whose directing career had taken off after the OUDS Romeo and Juliet), he was initially not a great success. Rather overweight, dark and foreign-looking, he did not fit the conventional stereotype and tended to play relatively small character parts. Always interested in France (he spoke the language perfectly) and in French theatre, he suggested to Gielgud that they should invite the French director Michel Saint-Denis to London in 1935 to direct a version of his successful production of Andre Obey's Noé.

This proved to be the beginning of a close and fruitful partnership between the two men. Saint-Denis remained in London and, together with Devine and their friends Marius Goring and Glen Byam Shaw, founded the London Theatre Studio in 1936, which offered training not only to actors and directors but also to stage designers. Run by Motley, this was the first course in Britain to offer training in set and costume design. Jocelyn Herbert, who was later to become part of Devine's life, was a student on the course.

At the end of the 1930s Devine finally got the chance to direct a play himself. His first professional production was an adaptation by Alec Guinness of Charles Dickens' novel Great Expectations, which played at the Queen's Theatre in 1939, with Guinness as Herbert Pocket and Martita Hunt as Miss Havisham; David Lean saw this and later acknowledged that it "exerted a tremendous influence" on his celebrated 1946 film. Devine also directed a successful production of a stage version of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca at the Queen's Theatre in 1939.